Archive

Recently I had to solve the problem of finding the shortest path from A to B and implement it programmatically. “There exists tons of solutions for sure”, – that what I thought… I was wrong. Few days of searching didn’t give any relevant result. The maximum I have found is some mentions that this problem can be solved by using graphs theory and so called BFS algorithm (breadth first search). In this article I’ll try to analyze this method of finding chess pieces shortest path in details with code examples and explanations.Read more…

Today I would like to tell about a quite complicated problem, which I have recently managed to resolve. The major sense of it can be found in the title of the post. One may as a question: what is the way this feature can be useful? It seems like no one was wondering this problem before, because Google was extremely poor for the answers. It is very logical and obvious: this is so much easier to debug, isn’t it? In order to try out new sounds or changes in the level logic, you do not need to recompile the entire project each time, you don’t even need to restart the application instead. Let me tell you how I managed to do it.

It’s been a long time I was suffering from lack of “Hide all windows” feature in Mac OS X. Why is it so important to me? I feel discomfort when there are so many windows on the screen, or tabs in browser, or shortcuts on Desktop, it invokes a panic in me. In order to focus on some problem I need there not more than three windows on the screen. Ideally just one. Five years passed away since I’ve migrated from Windows and all this time I’ve been using very inconvenient workaround – Hide others (Option-Cmd-H) in applications menu. Today I’ve finally found quite acceptable way to hide all windows by one mouse click or keyboard shortcut. Let me tell you how to make it.

From time to time there I face a problem how to convert the plist file from binary representation back to XML. This problem usually occurs when you need to extract project plist file from IPA archive and see what’s inside. This is complicated by the fact that the IPA builder (xcrun utility) compresses everything possible to reduce the size of the application, and probably this accelerates application launch. So after I painfully searched the solution for fifth time I’ve decided to store it to my blog.

The story of this project is taking me back to 5 years to the times when I’ve been just getting started to enter to Apple technologies world, to be more prescice when I was migrating to Mac OS X. As a lot of people I was feeling not too good about a lack of habitual programs and system interface elements. One of such confusion was a miss of Start button equivalent. To be honest I’m still not sure wether the way I’m launching an OS X programs is most traditional (I’m using a Spotlight). So, after few years I deciced to get rid of this disadvantage. Read more…

It’s time to tell the story about my contribution to very interesting and perspective project with a quite unique name Timera (origins from time and camera). Project founders have been looking a person for iOS developer position exactly at the same time when I’ve been looking new self-education frontiers for myself. The idea of project is quite simple. Its visual representation can be seen on featured post picture (the image is clickable). The user is provided with tool for making a time tunnel by combining two photos made on the same place in different time moments: first from past and second must be taken by user’s mobile device. The idea seemed interesting for me so I immediately integrated myself to the development process which promised a lot of difficult and interesting challenges. Read more…

It’s long time I did not update my blog. There a lot of materials as always, it’s hard to find the time to compile them all together for complete blog article. Today I would like to write a sort of mini-post with elements momoirs that recently one thing has lost its mistery for me. It’s about the Duck Hunt application for legendary device named Dendy.
Dendy is an eight-bit tvset console, a clone of the japane Nintendo Entertainment System. It is connected to the TV-set usually with coaxial cable, after which the video signal is tuned up on one of the channels. Applications launche by means of removable cartridges that in fact represents the circuit board with chip ROM, storing the application code. Read more…

Today I would like to describe (just not to forget) non-trivial process relating to implementation of Apple Push Notification Service mechanism delivers short messages to users’ devices applications in the AppStore. And I’d like to put actions sequence performed when creating and installing SSL Push Certificate: without this certificate server side is not able to send Push. Also, I’m going to write how to implement the most simple push-server php script. The function itself is very useful to alert users about new system events. Such monsters as Skype, Google, WhatsApp use push technology to make a call subscribers or notify about new messages in the manner of how it does standard iOS apps. Read more…

I could not make myself start moving towards to multi-language imlementation of my website … This problem remained unsolved for two years. It is caused mostly by the fact that the website engine, based on Zend Framework. Many times I tried to touch the problem of Zend Framework localization, but nothing . On the official resource (zendframework.ru) there is an entire forum thread, but I could not find a perfect solution. As a result, I had to compose it from various sources. And here is the solution I’ve finally got. Read more…

For a very long time I couldn’t solve one problem that appeared time by time. Until it happened again a few day ago. But this time I decided that to put up with this state of affairs is not more possible and once again began to research. And the problem is the following. Assume you have a the monochrome image (for example, the icon of the stars for the Favorites button), and a skeleton application that implements the usage of skins (customization of the user interface). If one client wants the star to be red and another client wants it to be blue, the designer would have to repaint the image each time. But there must be an easier way to give a tint color using CoreGraphics functions. Read more…